In the end, I thought that the best choice was, unfortunately, the grossest choice.

Using Transport Item to try and teleport the item up to me would drain my mana dry, and it might not even work, since the stone had absurd amounts of mana in it. I doubted the small size would be enough to offset that.

Trying to snipe the stone with Pinpoint Boneshard might just fail entirely and reveal myself to the revenant. It might be too mindless to bother with me while I was just standing here, but attacking it would definitely draw its ire. If I managed to break the stone, that would be fine, but I had no confidence in that.

Which left the gross option.

First, I tapped a spot on the ground a few feet from the edge of the pit and condensed a small spatial anchor into the stone, then I turned and started walking over to the path that led down into the heart of the pit.

I stepped over the invisible line that separated the slope downwards and the flat cavern ground and tensed, watching the revenant at the bottom.

When he didn’t react, I relaxed and kept walking down. The long, winding spiral reminded me of what I imagined the stairs in a lighthouse would be like, though admittedly, I’d never been in one to see.

When I got to the bottom and stepped behind the revenant, it paused in its ceaseless digging.

I didn’t wait to figure out what it was doing, instead leaping into motion. I grabbed the chain from around the neck of the skeletal creature and then yanked it upwards, trying to pull the silver chain over its head.

I managed to get the necklace halfway over its head before it spun and sliced out at me with its pick. I let out a yelp and teleported back to my anchor.

My power stretched and strained, and the world seemed to slow. My mana-garden drained, my spatial and temporal mana both nearly emptying out completely.

My life energy churned within me, and I felt it flowing into the spell structure, far more power than it should have taken for even a teleport of several hundred feet.

In the moment of frozen time, I felt the tip of the pickaxe press against my coat and slammed even more power into my spells.

Then I appeared at the top of the hole, where I’d put my anchor, and I sucked in a deep breath.

That had been way too close. What kind of mana draining field was…

I paused as a glint of silver caught my eye, and I raised my hand to eye level.

That wasn’t a mana drain.

I was still clutching onto the necklace.

But that shouldn’t be possible. It was so dense with mana that it shouldn’t be able to be moved by one of my teleportation spells, and unlike Dusk, it wasn’t linked with me in any way. I should have just teleported upwards and left the necklace behind.

It clicked a moment later.

If I’d been using my Transport Item, sure, it would have failed.

But I’d been using Foxstep, which drew on the power of the body to supplement the movement, and while the necklace was dense with mana, and thus hard to teleport, it wasn’t heavy.

It wasn’t really a burden on my movement, not in any sort of physical sense, so my spell had compensated by enforcing more strain on my life energy until I was able to just barely manage the teleport.

I had to stop myself from laughing.

Foxstep was an amazing spell, and I couldn’t even imagine what I’d do without it. It had been so incredibly critical to my development, and even now, it was pulling its weight and then some. What would it be like when I had third gate mana density? Fourth?

Then a horrifying scream ripped out of the pit, and I felt power surge. It flickered wildly, at times far stronger than me, and at times, far weaker than I was.

I sucked in a breath. I knew I had a few seconds, since there was no way its power was stable enough to let it fly, so I turned and slammed the necklace into the ground. Two more swift strikes against the hard floor, and then the stone cracked in half.

Given that Loyalty-Lapis was an Arcanist material, I expected it to release some massive explosion of power when it broke. Maybe it would send out hundreds of those ghostly chains and flood the air before vanishing, or I’d suddenly have my mind attacked by an onslaught of visions, or even feel the pressure of incredibly powerful mana bearing down on me.

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Instead, it was like closing an oven that had been open for so long all the heat had spilled out.

Nothing happened immediately, but over the next few seconds, I could feel the mental mana in the air and ground beginning to disperse.

It was almost disappointing. I’d destroyed a treasure worth thousands, maybe more, and all it had done was break like an ordinary stone? That was so… boring.

Then my mana senses flickered, and I spun to see the revenant emerging from the pit, clutching its pick. In the empty sockets where eyes had once been, a bright green light burned instead, and even though it was just a light, I could sense the vitriolic hatred rippling out of it.

I had destroyed a tool for it to achieve its purpose.

I was to die.

I shook the thought off, then turned and ran, sprinting up the tunnel towards its mouth.

I wasn’t just being cowardly, though. If I could pull the revenant away from the pit while the coblynau were evacuating, then I’d be more free to fight it with everything I had, since I didn’t have to worry about one of them getting caught in the crossfire.

The revenant followed me, and swung its pick. A rippling crescent of light, glowing with desolation mana, erupted from the swing and arced up the corridor at me. I threw myself to the side, using the series of steps that Ikki had shown me, glad for the training he’d put me through. I might not be a fighter like him, Ed, or Liz, but at least I could dodge some.

Having to move to the side slowed me, though, and the revenant gained a bit of distance, swinging again, this time in a horizontal slash. I ducked, rolling under the crescent of cutting magic. The revenant was above me then, slamming its pick down, but I conjured my staff in my hands and blocked the blow. The runes in my staff glowed brighter, but it didn’t break.

That seemed to catch the revenant off guard for long enough to allow me to slip back to my feet and allow an overcharged Briarthreads to burst out around me, while catching the revenant in a triple-layer Fungal Lock spell.

My lock didn’t seem to do much, not having any life energy to drain from the corpse, but my Briarthreads lashed wildly, like the tentacles of a kraken breaking apart a ship, and the revenant was thrown backwards, long scratches appearing along its bones.

I slammed my staff down, and a pair of Pinpoint Boneshards fired out to strike at the skull of the revenant, but then the power flickered upwards, suddenly midway through third gate.

The revenant, who had been almost pathetically weak, suddenly was coated in thick plates of black stone. It half reminded me of Ed’s skin of stone spell, but more externally focused, conjuring the plates, rather than internally enforcing the body and skin with telluric mana.

It exploded forward, and the bones I’d launched bounced off of its skull without so much as leaving a scratch. Relying on long-held instincts, I tried to teleport out of the way…

And failed.

I started moving, but I was still slow. The fraction of a second of extra speed that my biological spells bought me was likely the only thing that saved my life in that moment, as the pick swung through the space where my head had been a moment before.

Telluric power flooded the pick, and darkness swamped the room, everything save for the power of the burning green hatred in the revenant’s eyes.

The darkness muted my mana senses, and cold crept into my body, a sensation that was entirely new to me. It felt like my mana channels were being frozen, but with the channels engraved into my body directly, it caused me actual, physical pain.

I grabbed the power in my Temporal Basin, and drew all of it into me.

It had been weeks since the Idyll-Flume, and the power had built up, reaching the maximum store and then pushing to expand the capacity of the stone. As it poured into me, my temporal mana overflowed.

I knew that the revenant would use this cloud to try and kill me, so I moved as quickly as I could, straining my mana manipulation skills to their absolute limit as I converted enough into my second gate spatial garden for a single quick spell.

In the same moment, I blasted all three of my Analyze spells, Placid Mind, Vampiric Senses, and Witch Eyes, forcing the darkness to abate, and my mana senses to peirce through the cloud.

I saw the revenant, armor gone, swinging its pick up at my stomach. The pick sliced through my thick jacket and clothes, and I felt a drop of hot blood welling up against

And then I Foxstepped up the tunnel, leaving a Material Echo behind.

The pick drove through the echo and shattered it instantly, and I sucked in a breath. That had been way too close.

With the revenant confused for a moment, I drew potion vials from my pocket and launched one down the hall, and several things

The power of the revenant exploded up to fourth gate, and the ground around me suddenly warped, flowing like water. Churning heat, drawn up from the earth, began to glow, and obsidian knives that were still glowing spiked from beneath me, even as I cast Harvest Distance and drew more mana into my second gate to teleport out of the way. The obsidian spikes, now easily the size of my entire body, flowed up the corridor, following me.

But at that moment, the revenant’s pick struck the vial out of the air, and fire exploded along the corridor. The firebomb, pushed to third gate, was comparable to the strength of a fireball spell.

Admittedly, Liz’s fireballs were better, since she had ingrained spells supporting them, as well as a full gate spell pushing them to go further beyond their normal limits.

But my firebomb was still impressive, fire rippling out and coating the revenant, overwhelming the darkness that it had conjured around it.

One of the obsidian knives slammed into my arm, and without my usual aura pin and suit to stop the strike, the only thing protecting me was my overcharged Briarthreads.

They were strong, but they weren’t strong enough, not against the thick yet sharp pillars of obsidian.

A spike of obsidian lanced through my left arm, and I let out a cry of pain. The potion vial I’d been clutching fell out of my hand and clattered to the floor.

Why couldn’t it have been my right hand? That would have been so much better. Then again, my off hand was being used to hold my staff, so maybe it was for the best.

But I couldn’t focus on that, I had to move. The powerful obsidian was flowing beneath me, ready to stab again, so I barely managed to force out a Foxstep up the mineshaft, straining my mana senses as far as I could to make it as far as I could go.

In the instant before I teleported, I spotted the revenant, the bits of flesh and hair that had once been clinging to its body burning, stepping towards me, free hand extended, mana flickering around its bones in a complex pattern.